Luke 19:1-10
Barry Unwin. Venue: Welland (benefice service) on 30 Oct 2016
1 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. 2 A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. 3 He wanted to see who Jesus was, but being a short man he could not, because of the crowd. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
5 When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” 6 So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.
7 All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a ‘sinner.’ ”
8 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”
9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”
When Justin Welby the Archbishop of Canterbury used to work in the oil industry, He would travel all over Europe with a colleague and they’d be sitting in airport bars waiting to fly and they’d talk. Occasionally the colleague would ask him questions about Christianity – and Welby would answer him – but he never really got to share the gospel with him.
Anyway, their careers took them in opposite directions – and about 6 years later Welby bumped into someone who knew his former colleague – and he had a message from him:
…He told me to tell you that he became a Christian. He said it was all those talks in the airports.”
We all love to hear stories of people’s lives being transformed, and often for someone to come to faith, someone has to take a risk, someone has to go out on a limb. Just like Zacchaeus had to in our reading.
Let’s think back to our reading:
Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. (Luke 19:1)
You’ll remember from our last few weeks in Luke, Jesus is on his final journey, up to Jerusalem for the Passover. Jericho is the last stop-over town on the way, And while he’s there he encounters Zacchaeus, The city’s chief tax collector!
In those days tax collectors weren’t nice helpful chaps in bowler hats, they were traitors and extortionists working for the occupying Roman army. If your son came to you saying
Dad, when I grow up I want to be a tax collector
you’d disown him, as would all your friends down the synagogue.
But Jesus isn’t like that. He loves outcasts – he’s even got one on his team. Levi – one of Jesus 12 disciples – was a former tax collector. No wonder Zacchaeus is interested.
But there’s a problem: He’s too short to see over the crowds (v3) So he runs ahead of the procession and finds a tree to climb – he goes out on a limb – and then something amazing happens.
When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today. (Luke 19:5)
Question: how did Jesus know Zacchaeus’ name? Maybe he had an early version of LinkedIn? Or he googled “Jericho” & “scumbag”; and Zacchaeus appears top of the list?
Elsewhere Jesus tells us,
I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me (John 10:14).
In other words – he already knows all about Zacchaeus. All he’s done, the lives he’s ruined, all the pain he experiences and all the pain he causes. And yet Jesus still wants to meet him. He knows all about us too…and still wants to meet us!
But it doesn’t stop at just meeting. Jesus says to Zacchaeus,
I must stay at your house today.
In that culture to visit a criminal’s home and eat with them made you a partner in their crime. In going to a tax collector’s house Jesus is becoming like a tax collector. It’s guilt by association. That’s why the crowd are so scandalised.
But look at how Zacchaeus responds: V6, He welcomes Jesus. V8 He repents of his sin. Repent means your life does a u-turn. If you’ve been stealing, you stop and give back. For Zac that meant, giving away half his possessions, and then repays 4x everything he’d stolen. And v9 Jesus declares,
Today salvation has come to this house…
Meeting Jesus transformed Zacchaeus forever. We don’t know much of what happened to him after this though there is one early church legend that says he went on to become a leader in his church. So the outsider becomes an insider – the rejected becomes accepted – and v10 – the lost was found. That’s transformation. All because he was willing to go out on a limb.
Well look I think this story has got two main things to teach us, Two branches for us to go out on!
The first one is:
If you want more of Jesus, go out on a limb.
If you want Jesus to say of you,
Today salvation has come to your house
do what Zacchaeus did! Go out on a limb! Going out on a limb is all about taking a risk. No one comes to Jesus without first leaving their comfort zone, no one gets more of Jesus without changing. And let’s face it, most of struggle with the idea of change: It’s hard, risky. We’re creatures of habit, even when they’re bad ones, and even when we do change, people comment on it. I remember a lady who came to Jesus in my last parish, her friends said, “Now don’t go all religious on us.” Which was tricky because she’d got God, and he was changing her life for the better, in ways she’d never imagined possible. And of course her friends noticed. And when your friends start commenting, that makes it scary. Sometimes it’s easier just to play safe, to refuse to go out on a limb, to ignore the call of your heart, and to merge back into the crowd. But that’s not how we get more of God, For that – we’ve got to be ready to go out on a limb.
Shrek’s one of my favourite cartoons – I showed it to my 4-year old son for the first time earlier this year. He loved it. Anyway, there’s a bit of the story where Shrek – the ogre – wants to build a 10-foot wall around his swamp to keep everyone out. I guess he’s the Donald Trump of fairy land.
Anyway, there’s a sense in which we’ve all built a 10ft wall around ourselves. It’s a wall that keeps us in and God out. And the bricks of that wall are all the things that we value more than God in our lives. Maybe Relationship. Or money. Or power. Or greed. Or ritual. And as far as God is concerned, Those bricks – anything we put between him and us – Even good things like family and friends, when we let them come between us and God, they become a problem. Because if we want more of God then the wall has to come down. The way we live has to change. We’ve got to go out on a limb.
For Zacchaeus the bricks in his wall the thing that had to change was his wealth. He gives half of it away to the poor. And then he admits he’s been a thief. Do you see that?
“If I have cheated anybody out of anything I will pay back four times the amount.” (Luke 19:8)
Do you get the sense that Zacchaeus was broken financially by meeting Jesus? Yes. But he didn’t mind because what he found in Jesus when the wall came down was better than all the money in the world. The life Jesus offers with the wall down is better than anything we can build inside the wall. It was for Zacchaeus. It was for me. It will be for you too. But you can only discover that for yourself by choosing to go out on a limb.
If you want more of Jesus, Go out on a limb.
Here’s the second branch:
Going out on a limb to seek the lost
You know there’s something that struck me for the first time as I was preparing this passage. I was imagining Zacchaeus up in the tree there, and thinking – why was it that he was up there? The answers in v3, He’s short, he can’t see over the crowd.
Now all through this section of Luke’s gospel, there’s a series of stories of religious people, acting in a way to stop the gospel getting out.
There’s Jesus constant struggles with the Pharisees for starters. But it isn’t just them.
You see, Jesus’ disciples hinder the gospel too. They’re so focused on having adult grown-up religion that they push the children away. Jesus has to say,
Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them.(Luke 18:16)
Then there’s a blind beggar calling out to Jesus for mercy, he’s in a big crowd, he’s disrupting their contemplation of Jesus, so the crowd turn on the blind beggar and tell him to shut up!
And then we have Zacchaeus, And again its the crowds of people who have come to contemplate see Jesus, rhat are stopping the lost being found.
Now why would Luke group these stories together? Well I just wonder if he’s wanting us to be thinking about whether the way we do things is making it harder for people to come to Jesus?
You know, the population of our parishes, all told comes to 7700 people, and the combined usual Sunday attendance at our churches, amounts to 2% of that. That means 98% of our parish population aren’t in church on a Sunday. Now there are some Baptists and Roman Catholics and lots of people who leave our parishes to go to church in that total. There are some people who are housebound too, but that still leaves more than 90% of the people in our parishes who look at the way we do Christianity, and think,
That’s completely irrelevant to me.
That’s an uncomfortable thought isn’t it? Is it possible that the way we do things is part of the problem? If Zacchaeus had to go out on a limb to find Jesus, maybe we also need to be going out on a limb, to find people like Zacchaeus, Maybe we need to go out on a limb, and begin to re-evaluate what we do as churches, so that we can begin to do something about that 90%.
Do you remember the last thing Jesus said in our reading? He talked about his mission – which is also our mission? He said,
For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost. (Luke 19:10)
And he’s called each and every one of us to help him in that task. It’s not just the clergy’s job. It’s not just the lay readers’ job. We’re all ambassadors of Christ. We all have a part to play. We’ve all heard the good news that Zacchaeus heard. We’re all experts on the difference Jesus has made to our lives – and we can all pass that good news on. Problem is – sometimes we don’t want to.
Apparently there was once a Mexican bandit who crossed the border into Texas to rob banks. After he’d done it a few times, a reward was offered for his capture, and an enterprising Texas ranger decided to track him down.
And after a lengthy search, he catches up with the bandit in a bar, sneaks up behind him, puts his trusty six-shooter to the bandit’s head, and says,
You’re under arrest. Tell me where you hid the loot or I’ll shoot you.
But there’s a problem – the bandit can’t speak English and the Ranger can’t speak Spanish. So the barman has to translate.
First he translates the Ranger’s message into Spanish,
Tell me where the loot is, or I’ll shoot you.
The bandit is terrified– so he says to the barman,
the loot is buried under the oak tree outside the bar.
But in Spanish.
The ranger is excited.
What did he say? What did he say?
And the barman replies …in broken English,
He say, ‘He no afraid to die!’
Some of us are a bit like that barman – we’re keeping the treasure of what Jesus has done for us – to ourselves.
Friends if we’re going to do anything about that 90%, We’re going to have to go out on a limb, And take some risks for Jesus, try some new things. Not by changing our theology, because God hasn’t changed, but by re-examining some of our church practices, and traditions, So that we can join re-Jesus in his mission, to seek and save what was lost.
Amen.